


A Name that Grows in Dirt

by urbanMystic



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Cunnilingus, Earth Gems, F/F, Genital Mention, Other, Post-Gem War, Purple Prose, Submissive Pearl, i wrote this in less than 4 hours and it shows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-16
Updated: 2015-11-16
Packaged: 2018-05-01 20:30:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5219768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/urbanMystic/pseuds/urbanMystic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A ficlet peek into the growth of Rose's relationship with Pearl.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Name that Grows in Dirt

**Author's Note:**

> FUCK GRAMMAR I DO WHAT I WANT

The war had been over for 25 years. The first nations of the Americas still hung about the Jersey shoreline, and the Lenape had decided to leave the stone temple alone. It would be another 4400 years before Europeans would come to name the place Jersey, to wage genocide and war against the first nations and build the tourist town known as Beach City. It had been 25 years since a war had scorched and shod plains and mountains across the globe, from the midwest flatlands of North America to the desert sands of Egypt, where the fourth Pharoh now reigned.

For gems, it was the blink of an eye, and fatigue still hung in the air like mist. Amethyst was not yet born, destined to cook another 400 years, to twist into solitude in the universe's peripheral vision. Ruby and Sapphire were often alone, hiding, holding a secret they dared not yet name, the directive to be united as they were on the field of battle, to unleash a form designed for fighting because of the peace it brought them.

Rose let them be. For her, nothing soothed the tired ache of her hands like watching humans and animals and plants thrive. She wanted to fill the abcsence of a sword on her palm with dirt and grasses. Pearl was with her always, to and fro through the forests of Eastern Pennsylvania and Jersey, walking as far North as central New York State and as far south as upper Virginia. Wherever they went, Rose wanted to leave no trace, but it was impossible. Wildflowers smiled when she walked past. Saplings renwewed the green, supple filament of their backs. She was as the sun, going so far as to confuse quite a few crocuses in winter.

Pearl often felt like a crocus. The snows of Earth brought a silence, and she loved silence almost as much as she loved Rose. If her body was capable of thirsting, it was for the sound of running water or falling snow, and as the years went by she surrounded herself with ice cool fountains and the graceful dim light of winter sunsets. Homesickness fell upon her thin-skinned form as an emptiness and a levity beyond the ken of her holographic body, overflowing with the waters of her room. Rose, like the first blush of spring sunrise, always caused the servant to peek up her head.

No, Pearl was no more a servant. She was a knight. Her body was riddled with proof, each scar a malformation she had kept despite regenerating. Here, a Jasper had clubbed her, shriveling her ribcage like twigs while Rose picked up her sword. There, a Smoky Quartz had run Pearl through, providing a distraction while Pearl's mistress leapt over armaments. She even kept one mark a Citrine had given her. It had been a fight of bird-boned gems, of sparrows and falcons, leading to mutual destruction. Pearl was a crocus, yes, but one that had hidden well beneath the armor of wartime, that snow of mayhem: a crocus whose stem had become hardened steel.

Now she just followed Rose. She stepped in her mistress's footsteps. She spoke to see her mistress laugh and smile. Rose was warmth and abundance of promise, a body to press into when the human skirmishes looked too familiar. The flowers tilted toward Rose and Pearl felt kinship in that movement.

The quartz often found herself joyful of her companion. She noticed the passing years loosening her Pearl's tongue and lips, saw the supposedly frail servant body become a bed of river rocks: smooth, hard, cold, quiet, peaceful, edges softening under the years of water. Time healed, Rose learned, deeper than her tears could ever reach, and watching Pearl taught Rose to love the passage of time and idleness.

So she waited. She waited to see when Pearl would stop using that terrible name, the one that separated them like the clinical walls of Homeworld. It was a name born of smothering order, a name that came with memories of her plants dying, having nowhere to root. On earth she was still powerful, but powerful as a terraformer, not an aristocratic general. She wanted a name that felt like Pearl's icicle fingers in her hand, like the haughty laugh that rung through the bluebells, a name that flew effortlessly like her little sparrow across the clouds of her room in the temple.

Rose was not good at waiting.

"Pearl?"

"Yes Mistress." Pearl arrived in Rose's room, as requested, back straight like a valet to the Queen.

Rose sighed. "Pearl, don't call me that."

"But you ordered me to speak as I please," she replied with a smirk.

The eyes that met the smirk were oddly earnest. "and it makes you happy to call me Mistress."

"Should it not?"

"No! I mean, I don't know. Just" Rose beckoned the thin body to her own, "Come here."

She easily floated across the floor, "Yes mistress."

The floating knight was met with a kiss on the cheek, a rare but not unexpected gift.

"Why?" Pearl asked.

"Why not?!?" The curly haired gem replied.

"You're a quartz, mistress."

"Not anymore!" Rose picked Pearl off the floor and twirled her.

"R-rose!" Pearl feet promptly met the ground, though the spin seemed to stay in her head for a moment more.

It was the first time she had said the name aloud. She shrank away a step or two from the pink-haired gem.

"Yes?" Rose jeered, joyful.

"My a-apolgies, mistress."

"No."

"But it doesn't suit you!" Pearl burst out under pressure.

There was a giggle. "Rose suits me very well! It's my name, after all."

"It doesn't suit you to be called that by m-" another kiss interrupted her, and Rose's face lit up to see the gift she could give the graceful veteran.

Pearl was speechless, still.

"Oh? No more excuses?"

"I have more excuses! I mean, reasons! I mean -UMF"

Laughter came so much easier to the old general than seriousness. She his herself behind it now, unable to vocalize the reverence she had of Pearl's relaxing limbs. "Will you stay still for me, Pearl?"

The knight nodded.

"If you want me to stop just say so."

Rose proceeded to set her Pearl down on a bed of clouds, the softness of lambs wool and the scent of flowers. Pearl was floating as her mist- no, her Rose, knelt down and began undoing the smaller gem's shoes. Not her Rose, a Rose, a Rose Quartz, a Rose kissing her ankle before moving to take off the next foot covering.

A shudder came over Pearl, who still wanted to protest. It wasn't a protest on the basis of pain or discomfort, but on the basis that it felt blashphemous to have such delicate touches on this body of hers now.

"St-" Rose paused.

"Stop?"

"Yes. I don't deseve thi-" A warm hand ran under her calves, calloused despite Rose's best efforts to forget the feeling of a sword in her hand, curling to perfectly shape the knight's spindly legs and knobby knees.

"This isn't about deserving, Pearl. It's about how good it feels. Don't you feel good?"

"Yes." Her breath came out warm, her face flushed with confusion.

"Do you want more?"

Pearl couldn't deny the pull in her chest. "Yes." it was a whisper, but it only took a whisper. Rose's clouds could support a spiderweb without tearing a single thread. Letting Pearl be heard was an easy task. Rose giggled. With her hands she said what her words could not, that these sparrow legs had more strength in them than the giantess's own muscled back. her fingers wrote gratitude over the knots in Pearl's thighs. Her lips pressed thanks into the shinbone thats had splint and shattered so many times in that terrible war. The reverberations of the battle drove Rose to continue.

Pearl was still, mesmerized, warm. The reverberations that drove Rose's hands and lips across her body felt like homesickness, like emptiness and silence and blessed rest.

"Rose, please take off more."

The larger gem obliged, smiling. her body mirrored the clouds: present, spacious, luxurious. Pearl sighed, her chest loosening as her torso was revealed. 

"Pearl?" fingers traced the scars. The smaller gem's eyes threatened to tear up. 

"I kept them. They're mine."

"Do they hurt?"

"No."

Rose stood and revealed herself. Her dress fell easily, and Pearl was now truly awestruck. The press of skin on skin was familiar to her now, but this was new. Rose was completely at ease, layers of chuckling skin. Pearl knew each and every fold of the heavy brocade of Rose's torso, but to see the Quartz nude actually softened the knight's sense of vulnerability.

Rose got down on her knees and started once more sculpting her hands to Pearl.

"Don't call me mistress anymore, Pearl." Her voice was oddly serious.

"Why not?"

"Because you are my treasure, and I won't be above you anymore. I still remember how you fought, and I'm happy every day that you were there, but"

"Y-yes?"

"I'm even happier that the same gem is here now."

"Alright, Rose."

A flush came over peach skin. "Please say that again."

"Rose."

Rose smiled and laughed. "That's my Pearl!"

Kisses fell on thin blue skin. Fingers danced on bare, scrawny breasts, and were met with a staccato series of gasps. They touches traveled downward, until plush lips and tongue met the now moist azure wrinkles of labia between Pearl's thighs. The clouds were the only witnesses to this moment, to the whines and muffled cries of Pearl's writhing body.

25 years after the Gem War, before any human or Gem knew the word 'knight', the first knight was made. Originally sworn to protect the kingdom, she fell in love. Unable to show love any other way, the first knight swore her fealty, but not to an aristocrat or crown.

To her love. To the name of a flower that could set roots into this green earth.


End file.
